Singularity
'' |image= |series= |production=40358-035/209 |producer(s)= |story= |script= Chris Black |director= Patrick Norris |imdbref=tt0572237 |guests=Matthew Kaminsky as Cunningham |previous_production=The Communicator |next_production=Vanishing Point |episode=ENT S02E09 |airdate=20 November 2002 |previous_release=The Communicator |next_release=Vanishing Point |story_date(s)= 14 August 2152 |previous_story=The Communicator |next_story=Vanishing Point }} =Summary= It is August 14, 2152, and Enterprise decides to explore a unique black hole nestled within a trinary star system. Cruising at impulse, it will take a few days to get there, freeing the crew up for other activities. Captain Archer uses the chance to work on the preface on a book about his father, and also asks Commander Tucker to look at the Captain's chair on the bridge. Meanwhile, Ensign Sato volunteers to help in the galley, Lieutenant Reed begins works on some new ship wide security protocols, and Doctor Phlox examines Ensign Mayweather's headache. Over the next few days the crew starts obsessing about their selected tasks. Their behavior is also affecting their interactions — Reed and Tucker nearly come to blows, while Phlox sedates a frustrated Mayweather so he can run more medical tests. The situation becomes so acute that Sub-Commander T'Pol, who remains unaffected, easily notices that everyone else is behaving oddly. Her investigation into the cause reveals that a peculiar form of radiation emitted from the black-hole is the underlying cause. Unfortunately, it will take two days to reverse course and leave the radiation field. There is an alternate path, but it will require piloting Enterprise closer to the dangerous black hole and she cannot both navigate the treacherous field and pilot at the same time, with the senior crew now unconscious. T'Pol rouses the groggy captain with a cold shower and hot coffee, enough that he is able to man the helm. His ability to fly is sluggish however, and as they near the exit, a large crumbling asteroid blocks Enterprise's path. Reed’s obsession created an automatic "Tactical Alert" that automatically kicks in and brings all defensive-systems fully online, thus allowing T'Pol to blast the asteroids with the fully charged phase cannon. Once clear, things on-board soon return to normal, with the exception of the Captain's chair and Reed's newly proven security protocol. =Errors and Explanations= IMDB Factual errors # When the doctor is about to perform brain surgery he says he's going into the prefrontal cortex to shave some of some of the occipital lobe. Those two parts of the brain are in separate locations. He's not thinking clearly enough to remember that! Nit Central # Sparrow47 on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 7:16 pm: This black hole is supposed to be a part of a trinary star system (at least that's what I heard, if they said "binary" I withdraw this nit). Funny how we only ever saw two stars. Darth Sarcasm on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 7:49 pm: The black hole was the third element of the trinary system. # So, what exactly caused Travis' headache? Phlox finds a chemical imbalance and T'Pol later uses it as evidence of the larger problem, but if the chemical imbalance was the cause, wouldn't everyone else be having headaches? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:23 am: Perhaps. But not everyone may have exhibited the exact same effects. Some may have, and some may not have, and it’s possible that some who did just keep aspirin in their quarters. # T'Pol went the whole time claiming she was never affected by the radiation, but if so, why did she hole herself up in her quarters? Josh M on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 11:38 pm: She didn't for very long. When Trip left, she went looking for Reed. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:23 am: She went to her quarters because Trip refused to cease his repair of the captain’s chair, which caused her ears discomfort. # I'm still a little surprised that T'Pol didn't even try to wake Travis up. He's still supposed to be the pilot! C'mon! He's sedated? Well, find a stimulant! D.W. March on Saturday, November 23, 2002 - 1:20 pm: Travis has been cooped up in Sickbay with Phlox doing God only knows what to him. That's probably why T'Pol didn't even try to wake him up. She had no idea what Phlox may have already done to our hapless ensign and she doesn't know what drug Phlox used to knock him out. I'm no doctor but I imagine the wrong stimulant could cause a lot more harm than good. # So, why didn't Reed's alert (nice baiting by the creators, btw) go off the first few times the rocks hit the hull? SMT on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 7:18 pm: Reed said earlier that a hull impact would activate the tactical alert system he's setting up. Later, Enterprise takes a few impacts from what T'Pol calls 'minor debris', but which appear to be rocks at least a few meters across. This doesn't set off the alert. If something that big hit my ship at high speed, I would want to know about it. :-) LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:23 am: Perhaps the earlier "minor debris" was stuff that T’Pol knew the polarized hull could handle.Seniram 11:11, October 21, 2018 (UTC) Besides, the system may not be fully set up by that point! # SMT on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 7:18 pm: When Archer asks whether T'Pol would review his preface, she answers "I'd be happy to." A figure of speech implying emotion is something I'd think Vulcans would avoid. Josh M on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 11:38 pm: I was surprised at this too. Those pesky humans must be rubbing off on her. ''Seniram 11:11, October 21, 2018 (UTC)''She has spent more than a year living and working in close proximity with humans, don’t forget! # I found it odd that Phlox would have a mortar and pestle in Sickbay, less so because he might use them than that they would look so particularly human in design. If Denobulans developed such things for medical uses, wouldn't they look different? The Undesirable Element on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 10:13 pm: I don't see why. Their hands look just like human hands.LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:23 am: How different could a Denobulan mortar and pestle look? # PaulG on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 7:29 pm: From what I observed, when Mayweather first enters Sick Bay, Phlox is able to identify him without actually looking at him. How? Sparrow47 on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 7:47 pm: Maybe from some reflective surface that showed Travis entering? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:23 am: First, Phlox turns his head just enough so that he’s in profile, and might have been able to see him with the amount of vision that afforded him. Second, both Fight or Flight and Unexpected established that Denobulans have far more potent sense of smell than humans. # LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 8:10 pm: T’Pol says in her log that the radiation field extends outward from the black hole for half a light year in every direction but one, and tells Archer in his shower that they have to pass within two million kilometers of the black hole. She says she charted a course, but needs someone else to pilot while she determines the course corrections. Why can’t the computer do that? The Undesirable Element on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 10:13 pm: Has it been stated that the computer can do this in the 22nd Century? (Or could be programmed to do this in enough time?) ''Seniram 11:11, October 21, 2018 (UTC)''The computer ‘s ability to react to problems could be impaired. # The shower scene at the end of Act 4 seems to conclusively prove that Travis is the only helmsman on the Enterprise. When Archer mentions him to pilot the Enterprise out of the radiation field, T’Pol says he’s been sedated, and that therefore Archer must pilot the ship. The Undesirable Element on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 10:13 pm: Perhaps Archer is the second best pilot on the ship. It has never been stated what Archer did before becoming a captain. Perhaps he was a top-notch pilot. He did mention in this episode that it felt like he was back in flight school. (Also noting precedent: Picard takes the helm to pilot the Enterprise out of a debris field in Booby Trap) # LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 8:38 pm: In the beginning of Act 4, T’Pol gives Archer a heading of, "Zero-one-four mark two-seven." She gives a new heading as "Zero-zero-six mark four." If both half of the heading consist of the same number of whole number digits, why does she mention the zeroes on the first half of the heading, but not the second? Josh M on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 11:38 pm: Does it matter? (pick, pick, pick, pick, pick…) TJFleming on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 11:34 am: Only if one wants to live. The writers don’t seem to be aware that voice protocols even exist. The reason you use the digits zero (not “oh”) through niner (not “nine”) and fill all the available slots (three before the decimal, in the case of headings) is to avoid misunderstanding. Used this way, no two digits sound remotely alike. Even so, it defies comprehension how Archer could have misheard T’Pol’s “twelve point four” as “two twenty four,” even if she had properly stated it as “zero one two decimal four.” BTW, the latter confusion came to light when T’Pol asked Archer what heading he was flying. But, by convention, headings in ST are relative to the nose of the ship. Therefore, the answer would always be “three six zero.” Seniram 11:11, October 21, 2018 (UTC) Actually, that would be given as ‘’zero zero zero!’’ ' # ''The Undesirable Element on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 10:13 pm: I don't recall the exact line (and he was being affected by radiation at the time) but Archer said something about his father being the first one to create a stable warp field. Wasn't Cochrane the first one to do this? Or was the Phoenix's warp field not very stable? ''LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:23 am:'' The two scenes in which I remember Archer mentioning his father was when he first told T’Pol in his ready room that he was writing the preface, and when he read some lines of it to Trip in Act 2 when Trip was taking scans of him. In neither scene did he mention the warp field, so was there another scene in the episode when he did? And if so, you said he was being affected by the radiation, so wouldn’t that be the explanation? I mean, he was supposed to make the preface only one page long, but it was 19 pages long when he tried reading it to Trip in Act 2.' # ''Mike Ram on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - 10:31 pm: Archer tells T'Pol to slow the ship down to impulse, yet when she meets with him a few minutes later the stars in his window aren't moving! TJFleming on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 11:34 am: Of course they’re not. The ship is at impulse. # So why DIDN'T Reed like the soup?! LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:23 am: He said it was too salty. # Mike Ram on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 12:16 am: All of a sudden the ENT has twin phaser cannons on either side of the saucer section! When did this upgrade happen? I thought they just had one "big gun" in that little hatch on the underside of the ship. Reed himself couldn't have installed those two saucer emitters. Also, the beams look and sound too much like the NextGen-type phasers and not enough like the TOS phasers (something that rises from the early first season of ENT, actually). Josh M on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 9:17 pm: The Enterprise had two forward and one aft cannon installed in Silent Enemy. It should only have a total of three. # LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:23 am: Archer tells T’Pol in his ready room in Act 1 that the publishers of his father’s biography want him to write the preface, but only asked for a page. Why in the world would they demand that it only be one page long? Prefaces and introductions to books (today, at least) are often many pages long. Couldn’t they have given him a bit more leeway, by making it, say, two to four pages long? They probably want to limit the document size/page numbers. # Trike on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 2:57 am:''There was one point about this episode I loved above all others. It was that the writers didn't let T'Pol become the only one not affected by the illness. She said she wasn't. But of course she was. It was just that her obsession was with the black hole itself, the source of the madness. And so her obsession was very helpful to the crew, in that it allowed her to save them. That was one of many nice touches in a story that, even though the over-the-top acting sometimes pushed at the boundaries of disbelief, was executed well-enough that it was a very entertaining hour. I liked how the episode focused on one element, the black hole, and generated such a complete story from it.LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 4:09 am:'' She was not obssessed with the black hole. She studied the radiation, found out it was affecting the crew, and acted to get the ship away from it. She was not preoccupied with it to the exclusion of everything else. That’s not an "obssession." TJFleming on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 11:34 am: Nevertheless, it’s clear that she was affected by the illness. Otherwise, she would never have claimed to be unaffected. She would have logically concluded that either she was unaffected or that her perceptions were no longer reliable.LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 12:35 pm: I guess I must’ve missed it, but what indications were there that she was affected? TJFleming on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:34 pm: When she says she's unaffected, she's ignoring a reasonable, alternative hypothesis-- namely, that like the rest of the crew, she's affected and doesn't recognize it. But a Vulcan would at least look into that alternative (scientific method and all that). Her failure to think it through tips us off that, even if her actions appear normal, she's not thinking like a Vulcan (to the extent T'Pol ever thinks like a Vulcan). Then again, maybe I'm just obsessing.Josh M on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 9:17 pm: Maybe she did look into the alternative and concluded that she wasn't affected. LUIGI NOVI on Friday, November 22, 2002 - 1:07 am: Not necessarily. It’s possible that she already did consider it, and concluded that she was in fact not affected. She examined her own behavior to see if she were focusing on one thing to the exclusion of (and out of proportion to) other things, and to the point of neglecting her duties or becoming violent. She wasn’t. She thought about whether she felt any tendency to fall unconscious. She did not. Perhaps she even took tricorder readings of herself to see if she had a chemical imabalance. # The title of the show was a good use of misdirection by the writers. When I heard "Singularity," I thought of the many Voyager episodes where they encountered a spatial anomoly, which were sometimes called singularities. But here it referred each crew member's obsession with one thing. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 4:09 am: Or it could’ve had (no pun intended) a double meaning. # Besides T'Pol's helpful obsession, so was Cunningham's, in that he was obsessing with the crew being fed, unlike Hoshi. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 4:09 am: No he was not. He appeared in two scenes regarding the cooking, and in both instances he easily yielded to Hohsi without a fight.' # Why didn't we see Chef in sick bay? ''LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 4:09 am: Phlox said it was a simple virus, and that he should be fine after a few days rest. There’s no need to stay in sickbay just for rest.' # ''Anonymous on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 4:32 am: Did anybody find it odd that T'pol was using human dates in her (a Vulcan's) personal log? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 12:35 pm: She called it a Science Officer’s Log, not a Personal Log, which would indicate she’s making it as a reference to be used primarily by the crew and/or Starfleet. # Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 4:52 am: Given the size of the crew, I thought the soup pot that Hoshi was cooking in seemed too small. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 12:35 pm: She was making one batch first to test it because she was so obssessed.Josh M on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 9:17 pm: I doubt that the entire crew was eating at the time. # Kazeite on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 1:24 pm: Archer asks T'Pol to power up the phase cannons and she responds that it will take too long. But after 'Reed Alert' activation phase cannons are suddenly fully charged and kicking... What do you think about it? Perhaps she is claiming it will take too long for her to do it due to a) her radiation afliction and b) her unfamiliarity with Reed’s modifications. # Dragon on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 2:26 pm: At the end, Phlox thanks T'Pol for stopping his needless attempt to operate on Mayweather, and she says, "I wasn't sure it would work on a Denobulan." We know she's referring to the Vulcan nerve pinch. However, Phlox doesn't know what "it" was and Archer definitely doesn't. And so far there's no indication that the humans, at least, definitely know the Vulcans have that ability. (Let's assume for a moment that Trip didn't see T'Pol pinch the Suliban in Shockwave Part 2. His view was from a distance and didn't look that clear to boot, so it's possible he saw her take out the Suliban but not how.) LUIGI NOVI on Friday, November 22, 2002 - 1:07 am: It’s possible everyone already knows about the neck pinch. She used it in Strange New World and Acquisition, and may have filed reports in which she mentioned it. # Dustin Westfall on Tuesday, November 26, 2002 - 1:35 am: Even though it wasn't an actual emergency, why did T'Pol simply stand there in the galley when the Tactical Alert was called? Shouldn't she have immediately headed for the bridge, with Captain in tow? LUIGI NOVI on Tuesday, November 26, 2002 - 2:53 am: I think perhaps she was trying to get a mental handle on the situation, trying to figure out what she should do, now that she had witnessed the entire command staff affected.Darth Sarcasm on Tuesday, November 26, 2002 - 1:56 pm: She may not have been aware of the Tactical Alert implementation... probably a part of the packet Reed sent to her station while she was locked away in her quarters.Dustin Westfall on Wednesday, November 27, 2002 - 3:28 pm: Still, isn't the phrase "Tactical Alert" sufficiently clear as to suggest that the Captain and First Officer are needed on the bridge? Darth Sarcasm on Wednesday, November 27, 2002 - 4:13 pm: Unless said First Officer was suffering from the effects of the radiation and was too preoccupied with studying the black hole to bother going to the Bridge. :) Category:EpisodesCategory:Enterprise